


Make an Honest Man of Me

by magicgenetek



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Alternate Universe, Engagement, Gen, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Politics, Protectiveness, Revolution, Secrets, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, The Trousers of Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-26
Updated: 2012-06-27
Packaged: 2017-11-08 15:53:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/444870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicgenetek/pseuds/magicgenetek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In another world, on the eve of the Equalists' formation, Amon tells his Lieutenant the truth. The fate of the Equalists changes.  FINALE SPOILERS</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Confession

He had kept his bending under wraps for years – literally, at some points. He had run and run and bent his own body until he couldn’t anymore – couldn’t make a wolf flinch and bow with his eyes, couldn’t burst squirrelgeese with a thought. He’d dragged a hot coal over his face, his forehead and mouth, over chakras his father had taught him and cried until he laughed because it had stopped. He couldn’t hear the heartbeats of others in his ears.

And it had healed over, scabbed and sunken in like his scars. A swamp waterbender had found him next to his campfire, hands and face burning, and had grafted enough skin onto him that he barely looked like himself in the water. He wasn’t Noatak anymore.

He’d gone to the city. Noatak was dead, and Amon met an engineer who could barely get a job. Amon read and worked and Liu worked and read and they both fought triads in the night. If he had his bending, he could kill them with a glance – but he didn’t need his bending, when he could fight and work without it. He had killed that part of himself. Amon had been born in fire, and Amon was not a bender.

Until – they were outnumbered. Ten to one, a group of Triple Threat Triads, and one had Amon pinned to the ground, a foot on his face and his hands trapped in ice. Liu was across from him, hands twisted over his head in bent concrete and laying in a puddle, and one of the thugs was trying on the prototype glove. Putting it on. He can see Liu freeze, try and shove himself out of the puddle before the gangster drives his hand into the puddle and –

Liu screams. His body warps and shakes with electricity.

> tarrlok’s body twists with blood, lifted by his own blood, whimpering, his arms forced behind him and

Amon tries to shove himself up so he can do something, anything, and gets slammed back into the ground forehead-first. “Don’t touch him!” Liu is screaming and Amon can see the tears oozing from his eyes and

> he can hear his father’s heart, his brother’s heart, his own heart and his brother is so small with his body forced to kneel like this and

he can hear every heartbeat around him, his own heart shuddering against his chest, Liu’s fluttering heart so fast from fear and pain, and the pattering excitement and

> noatak screams

Amon snaps. He freezes the heart of the man on him and shoves him off. One attacks him and Amon yanks at the fluids in his joints to make him stumble before he kicks him into a wall. He can feel them coming toward him and it’s so easy to make them slip or twist, to shove their blood down so they faint, kill them inside their own skins. It’s too easy. It’s like crushing ants. They were hurting Liu and he’ll make them pay, make them pay, make them pay –

He laughs, or he sobs, as the last man drops.

Liu is unconscious, but his heart is steady. Amon can only hear their double heartbeats, and makes he sure Liu stays unconscious as he pulls water from the puddle and heals him. He’s not as good at it as his mother was, or his little brother, but it’s enough that Liu isn’t in danger of more than a few scars. Amon picks him up gingerly and carries him back to the apartment.

It’s only when he’s washing the blood off his mask when he realizes fully what he did. He’s glad he’s in the bathroom doing it, because that means he can vomit into the toilet without getting it on anything else.

He murdered them.

He killed them.

And it was easy. He was a monster, just like the benders he had sworn to fight. His bending had returned. He must have hit his chakras – he reaches up and touches his forehead, where a bruise is forming. He had unblocked them, and he’d killed them.

He feels Liu’s heart stir in the other room. He’s waking up. Amon wipes the vomit from his mouth and shoves himself up; he pulls his clean mask from his neck and stares into it.

What now?

> In another world, he decides to lie. It would only worry Liu, or break their friendship apart, and it’s not as if he’s going to use his bending for evil. He wants to save everyone from bending. One lie won’t change that.

Amon puts on the mask loosely; he’ll need to take it off again soon.

Liu is already shoving himself out of bed. Amon pushes him back. “Don’t. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“I’m fine,” Liu says, and tries not to wince. “I’m – what were you doing out there? I thought they were going to kill you, and then you just…” He bites his bloody lip, looking for words.

“I have a confession to make,” Amon says. Liu looks up.

> In another world, he continues, “Once, when I was a boy, and after my family’s death, I was visited by a spirit.”

“I’m a bender,” Amon says. He pulls water from the damp of Liu’s clothes, then lets it spatter on the ground.

Liu goes pale and recoils, shoving Amon away with shaking hands. Amon shuts his eyes; he can feel Liu’s heartbeat quickening, and he has to dig his fingers into his hands to make him not lash out with bending. It would be easy. But that heartbeat is not one he wants to change, and he.

“Why did you lie to me?”

He can hear the tears. He can feel Liu shaking through his blood, the water-filled cells of his body, every inch of him.

“You told me you were a nonbender. What else is a lie? Your family being killed by a firebender?” Liu grabs Amon by the collar, pulling him forward, and Amon doesn’t fight it. He still can’t bear to look at him.

“It was a lie. I – didn’t want to tell you my true nature. My father was a bender, and I – “

“Was it all a lie?!”

Amon’s eyes snap open. He already knows Liu is crying, from his voice and from the sense of water oozing down his cheeks, but waterbending couldn’t show the devastation in Liu’s face. He shakes his head, no, no – “I wouldn’t lie about us. I couldn’t.”

“Why should I believe you? You lied about everything else. How do I know you’re not using me for – for - ?” Liu can barely talk for weeping, and Amon doesn’t dare touch him to comfort him.

Using him. It would be easy, with his bending back. Twist him onto the bed and force him down in some mockery of affection. Freeze his heart or stop it or burst the veins in his brain or force his limbs to move or – Amon shudders . “I’ll show you.”

He attempts to brush Liu’s hands away, but Liu springs back before Amon can touch him. Amon closes his eyes and pulls off his mask.

He hears Liu’s breath of shock at the seemingly unblemished face; then, Amon undoes his armor and coat to show the line where pale skin becomes dark around his collar, where Noatak became Amon. “I burned myself,” he says, eyes lowered, “trying to remove my own bending. There are certain points on the body that control the flow of chi; disrupting them can remove bending for some time. I wanted to make sure I could never bend again, so I tried to burn those points out. And when that failed…”

Next are his sleeves; he pulls those up to show where his arms switch from light to dark. “I tried again. A local waterbender stopped me before I could throw myself on the coals; she helped me heal, and I could no longer bend.”

“Until tonight,” Liu says.

“Until tonight,” Amon says. “One of the attacks restarted the flow of my chi.” He touches the bruise on his forehead. “And I used it to save us.”

Liu looks at him, then at his hands, at the bruising where his wrists were trapped under concrete. “I don’t – I can’t answer this right now.”

“You don’t need to,” Amon says. He rises from his chair. “I’ll give you space. I’m going to go out for the night.”

“No.”

Amon freezes. Liu’s grabbed his sleeve, his knuckles brushing the line of broken skin. “You don’t have anywhere else in this city.”

“I can do for myself for one night- “

“No, you can’t. You look terrible, and I won’t let you run away from this.” Liu points to their couch. “We’ll talk about this tomorrow. I want to hear everything from the beginning, and we’ll see if I forgive you.”

“You will,” says Amon. “I won’t betray your trust again.”

> In another world, Amon and Liu kissed, celebrating the revelation of the spirits. The Equalists are formed in whispers, their hands clasped together in the night.

 


	2. The Day Afterwards

Liu’s quiet as he listens to Amon talk about his father, his brother, learning how to bloodbend. He asks for a demonstration, and Amon reluctantly gives it, pulling Liu’s hands over his head with a thought.

It’s not until Amon gets to last night and the dead gangsters that Liu says more than ‘go on’ and ‘tell me more.’ “All of them?”

“As many as I could. I may have missed a few. I was seeing red, and I kept on going until we were the only two heartbeats in the alley.”

Liu frowns. “We went after them because they were responsible for the Unification Day Massacre. I don’t think killing them is a great ethical loss for the world.”

“I know, but I still killed them. I’ve never killed a person before. I’ve killed to eat, but that’s not the same as killing in anger. I enjoyed killing them.” He rubs his eyes. “I made them suffer before I killed them! I’m just as bad as they are. Were. I’m a murderer – “

“Don’t go to the police,” Liu says. “You may be a bender, but you’ve still been standing on streetcorners promoting non-bender rights. Between that and you practicing a forbidden technique, it wouldn’t be safe for you.”

Amon can hear Liu’s heart beating faster. “I won’t.”

“Good.” Liu’s heart slows; Liu reaches out and curls his hand around the edge of Amon’s hand. “I’m still not happy about you lying to me, but I don’t want you rotting in jail.”

Amon lets Liu hold his hand. They sit in quiet.

“I still,” Liu says, “Want to start a revolution with you. Like we talked about.” Amon nods. “You can’t lead it. We can’t have a bender in charge of a non-bender revolution. I’ll be the leader for now, and you can help me.”

“I will.”

> In another world: “Liu, become my right hand. I don’t know anyone better to help me. You are the only person in the world I trust.”


	3. The First Official Meeting of the Equalists

Amon stops wearing the mask at home. He still does it outside the house; he can drop if it he needs to disguise himself, he doesn’t want the Triads knowing his face anyway, and it's comfortable.

But he doesn’t have to pretend he’s not a bender anymore, or that a firebender ruined his face, or anything. Liu had stomped on that snowball before it could turn into an avalanche. And, once Amon had worked to get Liu’s trust back, months of talking and explaining and everything –

They’d kiss without the mask. He already knew Liu’s sensitive points, but he discoversthem again with the sound of Liu’s heart in his ears. And Liu discovers Amon for the first time, his hands drifting over that long lost face, the lines of skin grafts, old scars his father gave him. Amon finds sea prunes in a market and tried very hard to keep a straight face as Liu pokes them with a fork.

They train their Equalists, currently fifteen strong, in how to chiblock and how to use Liu’s new inventions. Amon makes them all dinner, his mother’s old recipes, and Liu stumbles through a speech on the rights of nonbenders before the crowd jumps into make it better.

> In another world, their Equalists are twenty strong, and Amon tells them about his quest, the gift the spirits gave them. Liu watches from the door, a makeshift guard, and smiles when Amon looks at him.


	4. Five Years After the Founding of the Equalists

He hadn’t expected his baby brother to stare back at him from the newspapers. He really hadn’t expected to see him in a council seat, earned after rallying waterbenders to help heal people during the riots. And he definitely hadn’t expected him to start making laws that, slowly but surely, increased social stratification in Republic City.

He most of all hadn’t expected him to show up at a protest with the police.

“Don’t you have jobs to be at?” Tarrlok says, hopping down City Hall’s steps like it’s another game of hopscotch. The cops behind him watch; one of them is checking the spool of wire on his hip. “Don’t you have something better to do than disrupting the hard-won peace here in our city?”

Amon can feel the nervousness in the crowd through the surge in their pulses; he follows a step behind Liu onto the steps, and Tarrlok’s gaze bores into them. They had left the Equalist uniforms, for now; instead, they had found the best suits Hiroshi Sato could buy them so the media couldn’t throw ‘rag doll clothing’ in their faces again. The mask, for once, felt constricting, even though he’d left it loose to help with that.

He could bend. He could knock down the police, the council, even his brother, with a thought. But they had agreed – no bending, not even in defense of the cause. Not even in defense of Liu. Only healing, and only when asked for or in emergencies.

“We came here to protest the new laws, not to break them,” Liu says, straightbacked under Tarrlok’s glare. “We’re here peacefully. There’s no law against that in Republic City.”

“You are disrupting the peace around here.” Tarrlok grabs Liu’s chin and forces it up. “I suggest you tell your little friends to disperse, or I will do it for them.”

“Never.”

“So be it.” Tarrlok waves; the metalbender cops throw their cables into the crowd.

Amon catches two sets of cables, hissing as his hands bleed from the friction. Gloved chi-blockers in the crowd catch more, their goggles glinting in the light. The cops startle and pull their cables back, and Amon grins as Tarrlok flinches so slightly at the sight.

“We will protect ourselves,” Liu says, his eyes as cold and hard as ancient glaciers. “We don’t want to lord over benders like you’ve done to us. We just want to be treated as human beings.”

“We’ve given you the chance to live the dream of Republic City – “

“That’s nothing but a dream. We want a reality.”

Tarrlok sneers. “You’re nothing but a couple of rabble-rousing revolutionaries who want to destroy the city in your jealousy! You and your bodyguard.” He drops Liu’s chin and stalks to Amon, who clenches his fists and remembers to breathe. “I suppose you have some sob story about how a bender ruined your face and now you have to hide behind a mask?”

“No. I just find masks terribly comfortable.”

“Really.”

“What would you want to hear? That I was a bender and gave it up because I hated how my power only harmed others? That it’s a reminder of what I’ve given up for the cause?” Amon shifts his head; the Equalists know his story, and have helped him keep his powers in check. But the cops look uneasy, and Tarrlok even more so. “Or should I tell you that my father was a bender and I hate seeing his face in my mirror?”

“We’ll see, won’t we.”

Amon doesn’t realize what Tarrlok’s doing until too late; the buckles snap as Tarrlok rips off his mask and tosses it to the floor, then looks up in victory.

He waits for some sign of recognition, but – it’s been twenty years. When a wandering waterbender had found him almost dead from burning his bending off, she’d grafted skin off a recently-dead Earth Kingdom man; even if Amon still looked like Yakone, why would his brother recognize some pale Equalist as Noatak?

“You’re both under arrest,” Tarrlok sneers, and he pulls water from a nearby puddle and catches Liu’s hands in ice. Amon steps back and prepares to protect the crowd, once more, from the metalbender’s cables.

He will not bend, but he can chiblock and catch and fight like the rest of them.

> In another world, Amon closes the door.
> 
> Hiroshi Sato made him a small, soundproofed room in his factory. He knows Hiroshi doesn’t care what Amon does in it, as long as a bender gets hurt. And what his Lieutenant and his Equalists don’t know won’t hurt them.
> 
> His current test subject, a member of the Triple Triads, lies on the hammock, still exhausted from yesterday’s testing. He will rediscover how he blocked his own bending at some point, and he’ll go through as many of these worthless thugs as he has to for it. The cause is worth it.


	5. Seven Years After the Founding of the Equalists

“How many times have we been arrested at this point?” Liu asks, sinking back on the plank of bed in their jail cell. Amon keeps on healing him with water from their sink, taking the edge off the bruising on his arms.

“I think we hit triple digits soon. Tarrlok seems to think that squashing our movement is the best way for him to get political points.”

“I’m still amazed he hasn’t recognized you yet.”

“It’ll come in time,” Amon says, and shifts to Liu’s scabbed knuckles. “He’s always been slow on the uptake.”

“And we’re not telling him since that’ll put the sting of nepotism on our – ah – campaign.” Liu winces, and Amon pulls the water off so Liu can shake the stiffness out of his hands.

“And I won’t risk that. He can find out on his own, and we just have to hope that the mortification of repeatedly assaulting and arresting his brother overwhelms the urge to report a bloodbender to the police,” Amon says, and drops the water back in the sink. Liu sinks into his lap and Amon pets his hair; they’re both still filthy from their arrest, but Liu still manages to smell like engine grease and that overflowered perfume that Hiroshi got him, which is a comfort.

Liu elbows him. “Take that thing out of your pocket. It’s poking my ribs.”

Amon shuffles around his pockets until he pulls out the curved shard of mask. Liu pulls it out of Amon’s hands and holds it in his own, running his thumb over Amon’s tentative carvings. “If you stopped taking this into fights with you, it’d be done by now. You’ve lost two already.”

“Jail is the best place to work on carving an engagement necklace. I don’t have anything else to do with my hands,” Amon replies, and curls his arms over Liu’s shoulders.

“I don’t keep you busy?”

“I have to do something while you sleep.” He hugs Liu, and Liu laughs and hugs Amon’s arms. “There’s no rest for the wicked.”

“Didn’t I make an honest man of you?”

“Yes, but I’m still fighting my brother over the city. Sibling rivalry isn’t supposed to go this far.”

“He’ll realize eventually.” Liu reaches behind him to cup Amon’s face. “I’m sure he still loves Noatak.”

“If only he’d extend that to me,” Amon mutters. Liu pretends he didn’t hear and lets Amon cling.

> In another world, Amon chuckles at the paper.
> 
> “Tarrlok again?” his lieutenant says, and Amon nods. “You’re not worried?”
> 
> “Every move he makes gives us an advantage. We will be strong enough to overturn him and the rest of his corrupt government soon.”
> 
> His lieutenant nods. “I trust your judgment,” he says, no quiver in his voice. Amon smiles and pulls him in for a victorious kiss. He knows how his brother acts; he will save him from his own bending after Tarrlok puts the city in Amon’s hands.


	6. Ten Years After the Founding of the Equalists; the Results

“Are you happy that you’ve completely disrupted the order of Republic City?”

Liu doesn’t look up at Tarrlok; instead, he pulls the next paper from his inbox. “Do you mean, am I happy that I have a seat on the council now? I am.” His pen scratches. “Do you have anything meaningful to say to me?”

Tarrlok sighs. “I have tried to be patient with your Equalist agenda, but it seems we must make peace at last.”

“So you’re here with a gift basket to exchange for my forgiveness for hundreds of unlawful arrests and breaking my nose twice?”

Tarrlok’s eye twitches. “I’m simply saying that you will need an ally on the council.”

“Councilman Tenzin and I get along well enough. I have no intention to play your party line, Tarrlok. Your overly conservative stance is part of what drove the Equalist movement in the first place, and I won’t touch it.”

“You say that now,” Tarrlok says, and watches how the engagement necklace dangles from Liu’s throat. “We shall see.”

Liu says nothing. Tarrlok flounces from the room with as much dignity as possible, which falters when he finds Amon standing guard outside. The damn mask is smiling at him, and Tarrlok resists the urge to yank it off his face and smash it on the ground.

“Blackmail isn’t going to work,” Amon says, and Tarrlok’s eye twitches again.

“You be quiet,” Tarrlok snaps. “Just because your little group won this time doesn’t mean it’ll win again.”

“Go home, Tarrlok. You’re tired enough that you’re not veiling insults. You’ll be better prepared for tomorrow’s council meeting if you get plenty of shut eye.”

“Don’t mock me,” Tarrlok growls. The mask smirks back at him. “I know people in the Northern Water Tribe. I’m sure one of them knows what you’re hiding from and why you’re hiding under that mask. There’s not many Earth Kingdom people who hang around long enough to learn how to carve engagement necklaces.”

“Who said that I was Earth Kingdom?”

“You don’t look like you’re from the Water Tribes.” Tarrlok steps closer; they’re close enough to touch. Amon’s eyes are narrow and creased, and Tarrlok is sure he’s on to something.

“There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me,” Amon says.

“I’ll find out. We’ll see if you can play happy families when he finds out what you’re hiding from him.”

Amon shakes his head. “He knows every secret of mine.”

“Then I’ll tell the world. They’ll tear you apart.”

“You won’t.” Amon says; his voice cuts like arctic winds. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’ll find out that the son of the long lost arch-criminal, Yakone, had a brother.”

Tarrlok staggers and runs.

Amon huffs and sighs, shakes his head before walking into Liu’s office. Liu still doesn’t look up. “That was cruel, Amon.”

“It took him over five years for him to recognize me, and I still had to spell it out. And he’s arrested us hundreds of times. I’m allowed that, at least.”

Liu frowns. “Will he be alright?”

“He’ll be back once it sinks in. I’m not sure if he actually realized that it’s me, come to think of it.” Amon shakes his head. “I’ll make an appointment so I can talk to him about it properly.”

“Good,” Liu says. “You two need to talk. You’ve missed him.”

“I have.” Amon sits at Liu’s feet. “What’s on the menu tomorrow?”

“Getting rid of the ban on cactus juice sales. They’ve been using raids as excuses to clear out non-bender areas and build new housing.”

“Second day on the job and we’ll piss them off officially. I think we’re making a new record.”

“Good.”

Liu reaches down; Amon reaches up and catches his hand. Liu does paperwork one-handed into the night, and Amon listens to the sound of their heartbeats.

> In another world, Liu was the de facto leader of the new Equalist territory of Republic City, and he spent all seven days of his reign at the hospital. Amon’s stunt didn’t kill him, but it'd be months until he could walk again. He did paperwork, sent orders, tried to make sure the remaining benders didn’t try and kill everyone, hastily made sure as many Equalists he could were able to avoid arrest, and then surrendered with as much grace as he could manage.
> 
> House arrest is boring. The Avatar’s testimony keeps him out of prison proper, but he’s not been allowed his tools or old workshop or anyone he knows for fear of Equalists, and there’s always at least one guard from the Order of the White Lotus watching him. He buries himself in books and looks forward his next dose of opiates.
> 
> And he’s asked to identify bodies.
> 
> His guard wheels him into the morgue. He can’t stand on broken muscles, but the tables are low enough that he can see who it is from across the room. Even if the clothing wasn’t unmistakable, the hands are enough for him to know who it is. Was. He doesn’t know that face, but he knows the bruising under the ear where the strap of the mask rubbed, those ears, the shape of his shoulders.
> 
> “Is it Amon?” says – someone. Liu doesn’t care. He nods. If he had any dignity, he’d be able to say why he knows; even if the mind of Amon is suddenly alien to him, he knows the body. Even shattered with shrapnel and sea-soaked, he knows.
> 
> If he had dignity, he wouldn’t be weeping, but he’s lost that too. No explanations, no apologies, no forgiveness. There is nothing for him, not even revenge. Amon has taken it all. All he has left is living.

“No regrets?” Amon asks.

Liu nods and squeezes his hand. His engagement necklace shivers as he speaks. “No regrets. I'm glad we met. I wouldn’t have wanted to live another way.”


End file.
